You may have seen on the photobucket thread that there is an issue with many of the photos on the project.

While we are working on solutions to restore the photos, and this will take a great deal of time, we are also looking at how this affects us in the long term.

It's always been a concern that we don't have overall control of the assets we have here. It meant we could get up and running quickly and not rely on full time staff to provide such a valuable resource. But we were always at the mercy of the sites we used to host our images.

As volunteers with many other commitments we are limited to what we can do, and it's only with input from many others that we have made this place such a success. Over the past 10 years scores of people have spent countless hours adding photographs and information and none of us who have invested so much want to lose it.

We are very close to having a finalised plan of action to have our own, website/database created - one thatís easier to use, easier to search, and generally more user-friendly.

But to deliver it is not something we can do with just the small number of committed members we have, and that's where all of you come in.

We need your help - we want fresh ideas, thoughts and suggestions. We want this project, and the Research Group as a whole to be a group of like-minded individuals with the same goals, and who are keen to give as much as they can

Please reach out to us. Get in touch. Send us a message, drop us an email at scottishmilitaryresearch@live.co.uk If you can help in ANY way at all, we would love to hear from you. We'll happily tell you the ideas we have, and who knows, maybe you have a better idea. We'd love to hear from you.

I'm a relative newbie to the forum (but very enthusiastic). I've followed the discussion re a new site with interest. I don't have any new ideas but back the decision to create a website that is perhaps simpler than the all-singing, all-dancing one that was originally envisaged but would be "our own". Perhaps a simple website could be extended/enlarged in the future as funds/time allow?

I'm not particularly techie-minded (I never did manage to get photos on the current forum) but I'm happy to help in any way I can.

Some times it's a bit hard to find a memorial...more sections maybe. Maybe more options in the search if you know Name Rank Number etc_________________Researching WWI info from Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Kincardineshire & Morayshire.

I am not saying we ought to have a similar website but one of our volunteers created the website with the aid of Digital Fife. (Digital Fife is a Fife Council run organisation and provided FREE assistance to us set up the website).
I wonder if there are similar schemes in other regions?
Could a college/university take this on as a project set up a website for us?
There is also the work done by Imperial War Museum and War Memorials Online - the latter supported by Historic Environment Scotland - could they assist or would they regard us as duplicating their work?

I'm willing to help in any way I can. Let me know if you are having a meeting and I'll attend if possible.
Have no real suggestions at the moment but happy to read the comments and perhaps help find a solution.

My tuppenceworth is to hope that you can find a solution where the project is the host for the photos as well as the forum. That way you are master of your own destiny. However, that does depend on the many contributors to the site being willing to hand over their photos into your custody. As it stands just now, the contributor holds the control of their work, be it with Photobucket, or some other hosting service.

Personally, I am happy that my photos are used here, and by virtue of them appearing in my posts on the forum, it infers a sort of ownership by me. I put them on the forum via Photobucket for the good of the project, and certainly am happy to continue with that aim. So if you do end out hosting the photos, I am happy to re-upload my lot, even though it would be a long drawn out task. I have 379 photos on Photobucket, and at a guess about 350 of them are to do with War Memorials or War Graves. Uploading them is one task, then rebuilding the links on the forum would also be a major task.

I hope that others will be prepared to follow in the same spirit to allow the project to continue its good work.

Your hosts may well offer a photo hosting gallery that you can run alongside phpBB, and link the user memberships through a bridging facility. At TalkingScot we have such a facility using Coppermine. Unfortunately, I would be struggling to recommend Coppermine. From the admin side, I find it very clunky - and in truth our installation of it is not working well these days. Back in the days when it worked better, anyone with a forum membership could upload photos (or scanned images or the like) there, and then put a link on the forum for others to view it in the same manner as is used here for Photobucket and the like. I am guessing that there are other similar programs that you can install on your webspace that can work with the forum. If bridging between the two is not practical, then the users would also have to take out a membership of the image hosting package.